As the geometries for integrated circuits have scaled to smaller and smaller dimensions, it has become necessary to replace polysilicon transistor gates with metal gates to enable scaling to continue to smaller dimensions. When voltage is applied to a polysilicon gate, the polysilicon grains next to the gate dielectric become depleted of carriers increasing the electrical thickness of the gate dielectric and exacerbating short channel effects. Metal gates do not deplete when voltage is applied to the metal gate.
Because the work function of p-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor (PMOS) metal gates usually changes when the metal gate is subjected to high temperatures such as is required to activate dopants, replacement gate processes have been developed to circumvent the PMOS work function problem. In a replacement gate process, transistors are typically first built in the usual manner using polysilicon gates with silicon dioxide gate dielectric. The polysilicon gates and gate dielectric are then removed and replaced with high-k gate dielectric and metal gates. A thin silicon dioxide dielectric is grown on the single crystal silicon transistor channel prior to deposition of the high-k gate dielectric. Because silicide is on the wafer when the thin silicon dioxide is grown, the temperature at which this thin silicon dioxide may be grown is limited. Consequently the thin silicon dioxide dielectric is typically grown chemically using SC1 (NH4OH+H2O2). The quality of the silicon dioxide dielectric chemically grown may be marginal.